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Can authentic leadership influence Leadership and

organizational
the employees’ organizational justice in hotel
context
justice perceptions? – a study in the
hotel context 45
Deepu Kurian Received 31 August 2020
Revised 21 October 2020
Conrad N. Hilton College, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA, and 4 December 2020
Fredrick M. Nafukho Accepted 8 January 2021

Educational Administration and Human Resource Development,

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

Abstract
Purpose – The primary purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between a positive style of
leadership, specifically authentic leadership, and organizational justice perceptions of employees’ in the hotel
industry. The following research questions guided the study: What relationship existed between hotel
employees’ perception toward authentic leadership and organizational justice? What relationship existed
between hotel employees’ perception toward authentic leadership and distributive justice, procedural justice,
interactional justice and informational justice dimensions? What relationship existed among hotel employees’
perception toward organizational justice, authentic leadership and their demographic background?.
Design/methodology/approach – The study approached the research questions from a quantitative, non-
experimental research perspective utilizing a cross-sectional survey and descriptive correlational design,
which describes the relationship or association between two or more variables in the study which are authentic
leadership and organizational justice.
Findings – The results indicate that authentic leadership has a strong relationship with hotel employees’
organizational justice perceptions, and authentic leadership predicted the employees’ perceptions of
organizational justice. Authentic leadership is a relative new leadership approach rooted in positive
psychology emphasizing on the ethical and moral aspects of leadership, and the results of the study found that
when employees perceive their leaders to follow the authentic leadership paradigm, they also perceive high
levels of organizational justice. Authentic leadership has stronger relationships with informational and
interpersonal dimensions of justice which implies that authentic leaders are strategic in their interactions with
their employees. The results also imply that when employees perceive justice in terms of procedures and
outcomes, they believe that organizations determine those more than their supervisors.
Research limitations/implications – The differences in the strengths of relationship between authentic
leadership and structural forms of justice (distributive and procedural), and authentic leadership and
interactional forms of justice (informational and interpersonal), have implications for both justice and
leadership theories. The results suggest that authentic leader behaviors create a fair climate – an
interpersonally and informationally fair climate which promotes all forms of justice perceptions in individual
followers. However, it needs to be further researched whether leaders with high interpersonal skills and
information-sharing abilities showing consideration and respect to employees may result in higher levels of
organizational justice perceptions. Thus, further research is needed to determine the relationship of authentic
leadership and each of the organizational justice (distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal)
dimensions, which may provide more insights as to whether leader behavior contains element of justice itself.
Practical implications – The findings showcase the need for organizations in the hotel and hospitality
industry to establish programs that focus on leadership practices which improve employees’ perceptions of

© Deepu Kurian and Fredrick M. Nafukho. Published in International Hospitality Review. Published by
Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)
licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both
commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and International Hospitality Review
Vol. 36 No. 1, 2022
authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode pp. 45-64
Data Availability Statement: The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are Emerald Publishing Limited
2516-8142
available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. DOI 10.1108/IHR-08-2020-0047
IHR organizational justice and, in turn, lead to positive organizational outcomes including reducing the
considerable costs of employee turnover. It is also important that employees are aware of the policies and
36,1 procedures and have a perception that they can connect and communicate to their supervisors and managers.
Social implications – This study falls into the larger conversation of social justice and how an organization’s
leadership can be a strong associate for social justice movements by supporting equity within the organization.
Originality/value – The study integrates leadership and justice theories in a hotel context. The results of this
study may motivate hospitality/ hotel leaders to include authentic leadership development as an actionable
strategy to bolster fairness and mitigate some of the negative features of the industry.
46 Keywords Organizational justice, Authentic leadership, Human resources, Hotels
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Hotel industry is an integral part of the hospitality sector, and due to its visibility and name
recognition, it has become a leading indicator of a country’s lifestyle and the pillar of tourism
and hospitality sector. Hospitality sector includes a broad category of fields within the service
industry such as lodging, food and drink service, event planning, theme parks,
transportation, cruise line, traveling and other additional fields within the tourism
industry (BLS, 2019). The industry has increased its role in many countries over the world
by directly contributing to gross domestic product (GDP) growth and employment
generation. Additionally, research has found that hospitality industry has spillover effects
which contribute to the economic and social progress, and consequently to strengthening
national economies (Cut-Lupulescu et al., 2014).
Hotel industry is highly labor-intensive, with diverse employees from various
backgrounds and life experiences. For instance, hotels provide employment for highly
qualified individuals along with positions that only require basic skills and low educational
qualifications such as a high school diploma. In the United States and many other nations, the
hotel industry provides employment for the elderly population and opportunities for
immigrants and for groups with difficulties to access the formal labor market. Despite these
distinctive features, the hotel industry is often noted for poor working conditions, extended
working hours, lower pay, limited or no health insurance and high employee turnover
(Carbery et al., 2003). Continuous pressure from management and customers to provide
unique and exemplary service and negative working conditions are major factors of
dissatisfaction for hotel employees (Megeirhi et al., 2018). Carbery et al. (2003) found that the
aftereffects of such dissatisfaction are notoriously high turnover rate and contempt for
working conditions. Additionally, attitudes of hotel employees at work are especially critical
because of the high degree of personal contact with customers/guests and the behaviors
necessary for providing exceptional service to their patrons (Fulford, 2005).
Berger et al. (1993) predicted that organizational justice would be a major influence in
determining employer–employee relationships within the hospitality industry in the 21st
century. Organizational justice refers to the extent to which employees perceive workplace
procedures, interactions and outcomes to be fair (Baldwin, 2006). More recent research
focusing on hospitality industry has shown that the predictions were true to a great extent,
and employee’s perception of justice at the workplace is a significant factor in many
organizational outcomes including their intention to stay (Gosser et al., 2018; Luo et al.,
2017). Similarly, researchers over the years have consistently argued that future direction
of leadership research must move away from a hierarchical, leader-centric approach to a
more integrative and positive approach (Avolio, 2007; Dinh et al., 2014; Meindl, 1989).
Authentic leadership, often considered as an antecedent to all other forms of positive
leadership (Avolio and Gardner, 2005), is defined as “a pattern of leader behavior that
draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical
climate to foster greater self-awareness and internalized moral perspective, balanced
processing of information, and relational transparency on the part of leaders working with Leadership and
followers, fostering positive self-development” (Walumba et al., 2008, p. 94). Building upon organizational
this general conceptual argument for leadership as an antecedent to justice perceptions,
this study attempted to articulate that authentic leadership style can create high levels of
justice in hotel
fairness perceptions in subordinates. context
According to Karam et al. (2019), an increased understanding of the relationships between
leadership and justice perceptions is important for two reasons: (1) “Employee-leader
relationships are often characterized as social exchange relationships and are distinguished 47
from other forms of exchanges by having expectations of longer-term, interdependent
interactions that generate trust, reciprocal behaviors, and high-quality relationships,”
(p. 136); and (2) “Leader-focused justice commonly focus on research questions related to
either (a) investigating the unique effects of leader-focused justice dimensions (i.e. procedural,
distributive, interpersonal, informational justice) on organizational outcomes, or (b) exploring
how(un)fair treatment attributed to a leader is similar to or different from (un)fair treatment
attributed to others” (p. 137). While the constructs of authentic leadership style and
organizational justice are well established and have high levels of research activity, those
streams of research are more independent. Research on justice and positive leadership has
found that positive leadership and levels of organizational justice are positively related to
positive organizational and employee outcomes (Avolio et al., 2009; Kiersch and Byrne, 2015).
Thus, there is a need for higher integration of leadership and organizational justice research,
and this study addresses that critical need.

Problem statement
High turnover rate is a universal problem in the hotel industry (Faldetta et al., 2013), and the
global yearly turnover rate in hotel industry can vary from 60 to 300%, which is much higher
compared to that in the manufacturing industry (Hemdi and Rahim, 2011). Scholars who
studied the hotel industry have suggested that the long-term solutions for the turnover
problem can be found in the constructs of leadership and organizational justice (Baum, 2013;
Fulford, 2005; Luo et al., 2017). Extant research has suggested that having committed
employees who are satisfied with their work and working conditions and who feel that they
are treated fairly in their workplace is important to the success and bottom-line of their
organization (L
opez-Cabarcosb et al., 2015).
Research across various continents suggested that hotel industry still relies on traditional
leadership styles: from transactional or autocratic (Ispas, 2012), to laissez-faire (Yamak and
Eyupoglu, 2018), to paternalistic or authoritarian (Tran, 2017), and leader-member exchange
(Garg and Dhar, 2016). Supervisors and managers have the most interactions with employees,
and extant research has found that supervisor’s leadership that values employees, provides
them with a respectable working environment, treats them with fairness and ensures self-
development can counter the ill effects of working in the hotel industry. Meindl (1989)
observed, “. . . an image of managers as interested in justice and the fair treatment of
subordinate others in the execution of their roles is one that should be, but often is not
represented or taken seriously” (p. 272). Authentic leadership (AL) has been viewed as an
attractive leadership model to combat destructive forms of leadership (Storberg-Walker and
Gardiner, 2017). Moreover, leadership styles that cause employees to focus on justice will
strengthen justice’s effect on an employee’s resulting behavior, whereas those leadership
styles that channel employees’ attention away from justice issues will, in contrast, diminish
the justice–behavior relationship (Strom et al., 2014). According to social contagion theory,
when employees perceive the leader as being genuine, reliable, ethical and consistent over
time, a contagion effect occurs, diminishing the tendency of negative attitudes and behaviors
(Luthans et al., 2006; Avolio et al., 2004).
IHR Purpose of the study and research questions
36,1 The primary purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between a positive style
of leadership, specifically authentic leadership and organizational justice perceptions of
employees in the hotel industry. The following research questions guided the study:
(1) What relationship exists between hotel employees’ perception toward authentic
leadership and organizational justice?
48 (2) Is there any difference in the relationship between authentic leadership and hotel
employees’ perceptions toward different dimensions of organizational justice,
namely, distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice and
informational justice?
(3) Did any demographic factors influence the relationship between authentic leadership
and hotel employees’ perception toward organizational justice?

Review of relevant literature

Leadership and organizational justice
Leadership and organizational justice are two of the most widely researched topics in social
science and management (Colquitt et al., 2005; Hiller et al., 2011). Research across various
continents suggested that hotel industry still relies on traditional leadership styles: from
transactional or autocratic (Ispas, 2012), to laissez-faire (Yamak and Eyupoglu, 2018), to
paternalistic or authoritarian (Tran, 2017) and to leader-member exchange (Garg and Dhar,
2016). Luo et al. (2017) found that hotel supervisors or middle-level managers have the most
interactions with frontline employees, and their leadership practices influenced employees’
attitudes, behaviors and performance. An ideal leader is the one who can lead with integrity
and values, can motivate employees and manage a healthy organization that creates value for
all employees, customers and stakeholders (Pless and Maak, 2011). In addition, society now
demands that organizational business leaders not only generate a profit but maintain high
levels of integrity, morality and fairness while doing so (Hannah et al., 2011; Kiersch and
Byrne, 2015; Walumbwa et al., 2008). Positive forms of leadership are gaining traction in
academic and professional literature, and authentic leadership is one of such new themes
which represent a relatively new leadership framework stemming from the fields of
leadership, ethics, positive psychology and positive organizational behavior (Avolio et al.,
2004; Walumbwa et al., 2008).

Authentic leadership
Times are changing and so are people’s views on leadership. Successful leadership remains a
key success factor for organizations; especially when their employees are motivated by that
leadership to achieve organizational goals (Tsai et al., 2009). Economic, social, geopolitical
and technological developments have placed demands on leaders and requires them to be
more transparent, have increased awareness of their actions and guide organizations with a
moral/ethical perspective (Clapp-Smith et al., 2009). Several researchers agree that future
direction of leadership research must move away from a hierarchical, leader-centric approach
to a more integrative and positive approach (Avolio, 2007; Dinh et al., 2014; Meindl, 1989).
Youssef-Morgan and Luthans (2013) defined positive leadership as “the systematic and
integrated manifestation of leadership traits, processes, intentional behaviors and
performance outcomes that are elevating, exceptional and affirmative of the strengths,
capabilities and developmental potential of leaders, their followers and their organizations
over time and across contexts” (p. 199). Authentic leadership is a widely studied form of
positive leadership. It is also viewed as an antecedent to all other forms of positive leadership
including transformational, ethical and servant leadership (Avolio and Gardner, 2005). Over Leadership and
the years, authenticity has become the gold standard for leadership; however, a simplistic organizational
understanding of authenticity can hinder the leader’s growth and limit their impact
(Ibarra, 2015).
justice in hotel
Authentic leadership represents a relatively new leadership framework stemming from context
the fields of leadership, ethics, positive psychology and positive organizational behavior
(Avolio et al., 2004; Luthans and Avolio, 2003). Hannah et al. (2011) noted that theorists,
practitioners and researchers who worked to shape the concept of authenticity in leadership 49
focused on the leadership qualities, fostering hope and optimism concerning collective goals.
It is a general understanding that authentic leadership occurs when individuals enact their
true selves in their roles as a leader (Leroy et al., 2015). Authentic leadership behavior refers to
the extent to which the leader is aware of and exhibits a pattern of openness and clarity and is
consistent in their disclosure and enactment of personal values, motives and sentiments
(Walumbwa et al., 2008). George (2003) described authentic leaders as those who are high in
integrity and purpose, have unwavering core values and show a strong commitment to all
stakeholders (Gardner et al., 2005; Luthans and Avolio, 2003). Northouse (2018) proposed
three different viewpoints about authentic leadership – the intrapersonal perspective which
focuses on the leader and what goes on within the leader; the interpersonal perspective which
outlines authentic leadership as a relational process by leaders and followers together; and
the developmental perspective which views authentic leadership as something that can be
nurtured in a leader, rather than as a fixed trait.

Organizational justice
The origin of organizational justice research is rooted in moral philosophy that focuses on
what societies should do and how people should treat each other and which has evolved into
social science treatments of how people form judgments about such norms and react to
perceived violations of perceived norms (Rupp et al., 2017). Social scientists have long
recognized the importance of the ideals of justice as the basic requirement for the effective
functioning of organizations and the personal satisfaction of the individuals they employ
(Greenberg, 1990). Organizational justice has always been a major focus of research due to its
connection with numerous employee outcomes: satisfaction, commitment, engagement, trust
and reduced levels of turnover (Martinson et al., 2010).
Drawing from the works of Homans (1958) and Adams (1965), distributive justice is
considered as the original concept of organizational justice which deals with the fairness of
outcomes including pay, rewards and promotion (Colquitt et al., 2005). Thibaut and Walker
(1975) conducted a series of studies on the fairness of decision-making processes, which
contributed to the development of procedural justice. Thus, procedural justice is concerned
with fairness issues about the processes used to determine outcomes. Bies and Moag (1986)
observed that decision events have three facets: a decision, a procedure and an interpersonal
interaction during which that procedure is implemented. This led to the development of third
dimension – interactional justice – which refers to the fairness of interpersonal interaction.
Bies and Moag argued that that interactional justice was fostered when relevant authorities
communicated procedural details in a respectful and proper manner and justified decisions
using honest and truthful information. Some scholars expanded the communication criteria
in interactional justice to a fourth dimension – informational justice – which focused on
justification and truthfulness in communication. In an organization, members interact with
each other, observe each other’s behavior and engage in collective sense-making, a tendency
that may ultimately lead to the development of shared perceptions on how to evaluate justice-
triggering events (Naumann and Bennett, 2000). As Umphress et al. (2003) stated, “justice
perceptions are not formed in isolation; rather, they are subject to the influences of those with
whom we interact” (p. 739).
IHR All types of justice perceptions have been associated with a wide range of positive
36,1 organizational outcomes in the literature. In their meta-analytic review, Cohen-Charash and
Spector (2001) showed justice perceptions to be positively related to job performance (i.e. role
performance) as well as organizational citizenship behaviors (i.e. extra-role performance,
going beyond the job requirements to help the organization). Justice perceptions are also
associated with positive organizational attitudes, including organizational commitment
(Colquitt et al., 2001), job satisfaction (Greenberg, 2011) and inversely related to employee
50 burnout, turnover and work-related stress (Fox et al., 2001; Judge and Colquitt, 2004). It is
evident from the extant literature that organizational justice plays an important role in the
organization, the organizational outcomes and relationships within the organization.

Theoretical foundations
An established theoretical framework for explaining how people’s reactions to justice may
vary depending on a leader’s behavioral style is leader fairness theory, also known as the
contingency approach to leadership and fairness (De Cremer, 2006; De Cremer and Tyler,
2011). This theory posits that a leader’s style will direct employees’ attention either toward or
away from matters of organizational justice (Strom et al., 2014). The authentic leader models
the way and ensures justice and fairness, because authentic leaders fully embrace the
imperative of a healthy workplace environment, authentically live it and engage others in the
achievement (Kerfoot, 2006). According to fairness theory, moral accountability is a central
feature to organizational justice and the formation of fairness judgments, and justice
perceptions are largely grounded in basic moral and ethical assumptions regarding how
others should be treated (Folger and Cropanzano, 2001; Folger et al., 2005). According to May
et al. (2003), authentic leaders are those who have developed the ability to make decisions and
behave in ways that are ethically responsible to their stakeholders and have a high level of
moral perspective to recognize and successfully evaluate ethical issues. In sum, morality is
theorized to be at the heart of authentic leadership and is also a critical component of
organizational justice, and this common foundation is proposed as one key reason why
authentic leadership should predict high levels of organizational fairness. Exchange
relationships cannot develop in the absence of trust (Blau, 1964) which is a common factor in
the constructs of organization justice and authentic leadership. Studies have found that
employee’s perception of organizational trust enhances when they are treated fairly, and
employees’ trust in their leader is associated with their positive attitudes and behavior
(Avolio et al., 2004). Because authentic leaders exemplify high moral standards, integrity and
honesty, their favorable reputation fosters positive expectations among followers, enhancing
their levels of trust and willingness to cooperate with the leader for the benefit of the
organization

Methods
The study approached the research questions from a quantitative, non-experimental research
perspective utilizing a cross-sectional survey and descriptive correlational design, which
describes the relationship or association between two or more variables in the study, which
are authentic leadership and organizational justice (Drummond and Murphy-Reyes, 2018).

Study sample and sample selection

The target population for this study comprised of employees working in hotel industry in the
United States. The sample selection for this study can be classified under the general category
of cluster sampling. Respondents for this study were recruited in two ways. Firstly, the study
subjects including undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in hospitality management
courses and employed in hotels were invited to participate in the study. Snowball sampling Leadership and
(Berg, 2006) was utilized, and qualified study subjects were requested to share the invitation organizational
with other subjects like them who met the criteria defined for the targeted population.
Secondly, leaders of professional / trade organizations in hotel industry (Greater Houston
justice in hotel
Hotel and Lodging Association and Texas Hotel and Lodging Association) were contacted context
through common acquaintances. The organization’s leaders were appraised of the purpose of
the study and its relevance, and upon their agreement, an email invitation to participate in the
study was forwarded to all members in the organization by the organizational leaders. The 51
organizations’ membership consisted of hotel organizations in the state of Texas. The online
survey took approximately 15 min to complete and was accessible from any computer with
an Internet connection.

Instruments for data collection

The data for this study were collected using electronic surveys administered to hotel
employees in the United States. The Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) was adopted
to assess self- or other-rated perceptions of authentic leadership behavior and is copyrighted.
The permission to use the instrument was obtained from Mindgarden Inc. Organizational
justice was measured using Colquitt’s 20-item organizational justice scale, which is available
in the public domain.

Validity and reliability of the instruments

When searching for an appropriate survey instrument, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is one of
the most frequently reported statistic used to measure reliability. Previous studies utilizing
the ALQ have consistently reported Cronbach’s alpha of around 0.90 for authentic leadership
(Kiersch and Byrne, 2015; Rego et al., 2012; Walumbwa et al., 2008) which denotes excellent to
high reliability. Similarly, previous studies have consistently reported Cronbach’s alpha for
the four dimensions of organizational justice falls around 0.85 to 0.93 (Kiersch and Byrne,
2015; Nadiri and Tanova, 2010; Ambrose and Schminke, 2009). Colquitt’s (2001) initial scale
development and validation study provided evidence of construct validity via predictive
validity, and the wide body of justice research in the past decade has further strengthened the
evidence for these four scales as valid measures of the four intended justice types –
distributive, procedural, interactional and informational (Greenberg, 2011). The two
instruments used in this study had been previously validated independently, but they
were combined in this study. Therefore, it was prudent to use exploratory factor analysis
(EFA) to cross-validate the instruments in order to consider possible changes to the internal
structure of the constructs. In this study, EFA was deemed appropriate because the items
drawn from previously validated instruments were being used in a unique context and had
not previously been studied in conjunction with each other.

Data collection procedures

The survey email was directly sent to 420 participants with a request to forward the survey to
any hotel employees. Of the study subjects contacted, 264 individuals responded to the
survey, of which 92 were incomplete/ partial responses. The study’s conceptual model was
tested with data from employees working in the hotel industry in the United States, who
responded to survey questions regarding their perceptions of their direct supervisor’s
leadership and level of fairness in organizations. Direct supervisors were chosen as the
leaders in this study because research has shown that an employee’s immediate supervisor is
a greater determinant of employee behavior than higher-level organizational leaders due
to frequency in interaction and direct influence on each employee’s work experience
IHR (De Coninck, 2010; Pillai et al., 1999). Respondents rated their direct supervisor in terms of
36,1 perceived authentic leadership using the 16-item ALQ (Avolio et al., 2007).
The survey completion rate of those who participated in the survey was 65.15% (n 5 172).
The sample included 75 males and 96 females, that is, 43.60% and 55.81%, respectively. One
participant (0.58 %) selected the non-binary gender. The age range of participants that had
the highest level of participation was 18–34 years (n 5 122, 70.93%), followed by 35–50
(n 5 33, 19.19%). Most of the study participants were White (n 5 71, 41.52%), followed
52 closely by Asian (n 5 49, 28.65%) and Hispanics (n 5 41, 23.98%). The maximum response
for education-level attainment for hotel employees who responded to this survey was 4 years
college (n 5 81, 47.09 %). For organizational tenure, 66 participants (38.37%) were employed
with the organization for 4–10 years, which was closely followed by 65 (37.79%) participants
who stated their experience was between 0 and 3 years; 69.05 percent (n 5 116) of the
participants reported that they worked in the front of the house, with high guest interaction,
while the rest worked in the back of the house, with minimal to no guest interaction.

Results
Even though validity and reliability had been previously established for each of the
instruments used in this study, an EFA was conducted to determine how the items utilized in
this study related or loaded onto various constructs. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of
sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s test of sphericity were utilized to ensure whether the
sample data met minimum criteria for factor analysis. Hutcheson and Sofroniou (1999) stated
that values between 0.5 and 0.7 are mediocre, values between 0.7 and 0.8 are good, values
between 0.8 and 0.9 are great and values above 0.9 are the best. The KMO for the combined
items (KMO 5 0.944) in this study exceeded the 0.9 value; therefore, factor analysis is
appropriate for these data. Similarly, a significant Bartlett test implies that the correlation
matrix is not an identity matrix; therefore, there are some relationships between the variables
that can be included in the analysis (Tabachnick and Fidell, 1996). For these data, Bartlett’s
test is highly significant (p < 0.001), and therefore factor analysis is appropriate.
Communalities were inspected to determine how well the solution (i.e. the constructs
extracted) accounted for the variance of each item. The communalities in the column labeled
extraction reflect the common variance in the data structure. Communalities exceeded the
minimum criterion value of 0.30 (Warner, 2013), indicating that the variance in each item was
sufficiently captured in the factor solution. EFA, via principal components analysis with
varimax rotation, produced five constructs, each with an eigenvalue equal to or greater than
1, for the combined 36-item survey. The first five components cumulatively account for the
major proportion of the total variance (75.22%). However, as seen from Table 1, rotation has
the effect of optimizing the factor structure, and one consequence for the data is that the
relative importance of the five factors is equalized. Before rotation, component one accounted
for considerably more variance than the remaining four (54.04% compared to 9.35, 5.02, 3.69
and 3.12%), but after rotation, component one accounted for only 17.23% of variance
(compared to 16.88, 15.68, 15.04 and 10.38%, respectively). For this study, all observed
components with eigenvalues larger than their corresponding random eigenvalues are
considered “significant,” and thus defined a valid dimension and were included.
Even though the factor matrix did not have a clean factor structure, the factor loadings for
the survey items clearly loaded onto distinct factors, the rotated component matrix for
loadings across the five constructs. The factor loading values below 0.45 were suppressed,
and cross-loading was reported for couple items, but there was no major cross-loading. The
rotation confirmed that there were two constructs as originally proposed, but items did not
load in each construct as expected for the dimensions of organizational justice. After carefully
reviewing the items that loaded differently, the researcher decided to interpret the items to the
 Initial eigenvalues Extraction sums of squared loadings Rotation sums of squared loadings
Component Total % of variance Cumulative % Total % of variance Cumulative % Total % of variance Cumulative %

1 19.45 54.04 54.04 19.45 54.04 54.04 6.20 17.22 17.22

2 3.36 9.35 63.38 3.36 9.35 63.38 6.08 16.88 34.11
3 1.81 5.02 68.41 1.81 5.02 68.41 5.65 15.69 49.79
4 1.33 3.69 72.10 1.33 3.69 72.10 5.42 15.05 64.84
5 1.12 3.12 75.22 1.12 3.12 75.22 3.74 10.38 75.22
Note(s): Extraction method: principal component analysis; components with eigenvalues below 1.0 not displayed
organizational

53
context
Leadership and
justice in hotel

Table 1.

explained
Total variance
IHR original dimensions of organizational justice. Thus, based on the results of the EFA and
36,1 review by the researcher, all the 36 items represented in the two original constructs of
authentic leadership and organizational justice were retained. As far as internal consistency
of the scale is concerned, the analysis of authentic leadership scale indicates high degrees of
internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha 5 0.962). Similarly, organizational justice and its
dimensions showed high levels of internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha ranging from
0.926 to 0.966.
54 Authentic leadership and organizational justice showed a strong degree of correlation
(r 5 0.720**) which means that those who have a high perception of their supervisor
authentic leadership tend to have a higher perception of organizational justice. It is not
surprising to have strong correlation between age and work experience (r 5 0.791**), because
as age increases, the work experience also increases. All other significant relationships
(educational level and age, work experience and educational level, functional area and
ethnicity, work experience and authentic leadership, and functional area and educational
level) showed a weak or very weak degree of correlation.
The relationship between authentic leadership and distributive justice shows a moderate
degree of positive correlation at 0.51, with a confidence interval of 95% and a statistical
significance of p ≤ 0.01. The higher perceptions of authentic leadership only resulted in a
moderate degree of distributive justice perceptions. The relationship between authentic
leadership and distributive justice was the lowest when compared to other organizational
justice dimensions. The relationship between authentic leadership and procedural justice
shows a strong degree of positive correlation at 0.61, with a confidence interval of 95% and a
statistical significance of p ≤ 0.01. Thus, it can be said that those who have higher perceptions
of authentic leadership tend to have strong perceptions of procedural justice in the
organization. The relationship between authentic leadership and informational justice shows
a strong degree of positive correlation at 0.77, with a confidence interval of 95% and a
statistical significance of p ≤ 0.01. The relationship between authentic leadership and
informational justice was the highest in comparison with other justice dimensions. The
relationship between authentic leadership and interpersonal / interactional justice shows a
strong degree of positive correlation at 0.65, with a confidence interval of 95% and a
statistical significance of p ≤ 0.01.
Before conducting a regression analysis, the following assumptions for multiple
regression were tested. The assumption of linearity should be met because regression
model assumes a linear relationship between the independent and dependent variable.
According to scatterplot, the independent variable (authentic leadership) has a linear
relationship with the dependent variable (organizational justice). The assumption of minimal
multicollinearity should be met because it means that independent variables should not be
highly correlated with each other in order to better predict the dependent variable in the
model. As shown in correlation matrix in Table 2, the independent variables do not highly
correlate with each other. Also, the variance inflation factor (VIF) value is one (1) and the
value of tolerance is also one (1), which eliminate the assumption of multicollinearity. Finally,
the assumption of homoscedasticity should be met, which means that the variability of
residual errors should be the same across all possible predicted values of the dependent
variable. The scatterplot does not show a pattern or unusual vales, which means the residuals
are randomly scattered.
A regression analysis was conducted to analyze the difference in relationship between
authentic leadership and the different dimensions of organizational justice taken
independently. As evident from Table 2, authentic leadership accounted only for 25.4%
(adjusted R square 5 0.254) of the variance in distributive justice, while authentic
leadership accounted for 59.2% (adjusted R square 5 0.592) of variance in informational
justice.
 As inferred from Table 2, hotel employees perceive authentic leaders exhibit high levels on Leadership and
informational and interactional justice (individual focused) when compared to distributive organizational
and procedural justice (organization focused).
Hierarchical regression was conducted to show whether the demographic and
justice in hotel
independent variables explained a statistically significant amount of variance in the context
dependent variables. The hierarchical multiple regression was conducted in two steps. First,
all the demographic variables age, gender, ethnicity, education, experience and functional
area were entered. In the second step, organizational justice was included. The model 55
summary is depicted in Table 3. The multiple regression model with all seven predictors
(Model 2) produced an adjusted R2 5 0.569, F (7, 158) 5 29.823, with a significance level of
p < 0.001. However, Model 1 with the demographic variables alone produced an adjusted
R2 5 0.023, F (6, 159) 5 1.646 and were not significant at p < 0.05. As evident from the models,
the demographic variables were not statistically significant in predicting organizational
justice. But when authentic leadership was added as the predictor (Model 2), it accounted for
55% (adjusted R square 5 0.550) of the variance in organizational justice perception of hotel
employees. Thus, the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that all
the independent variables in this study accounted for approximately 55% of the variation in
organizational justice perceptions among hotel employees. By analyzing the coefficients
presented in Table 3, on Model 1, only one demographic variable, gender, was found to be
statistically significant (β 5 0.161, t 5 2.034, p 5 0.044). However, in Model 2, the coefficient
table shows two demographic variables as statistically significant: work experience

Model R R square Adjusted R square Std. error of the estimate

Distributive justice 0.508 0.258 0.254 0.96747

Procedural justice 0.606 0.368 0.364 0.83534
Informational justice 0.771 0.595 0.592 0.70950 Table 2.
Interactional justice 0.650 0.422 0.418 0.82047 Regression model

Std. error of the

Model R R square Adjusted R square estimate

1 0.242 0.058 0.023 0.93209

B Std. error Beta t Sig
(Constant) 4.440 0.375 11.850 0.000
Age category 0.091 0.181 0.064 0.506 0.613
Gender 0.286 0.140 0.161 2.034 0.044
Ethnicity 0.013 0.023 0.047 0.580 0.563
Educational level 0.014 0.088 0.013 0.163 0.870
Work experience 0.049 0.121 0.051 0.406 0.685
Functional area 0.263 0.171 0.130 1.536 0.126
2 0.754 0.569 0.550 0.63248
(Constant) 1.965 0.312 6.298 0.000
Age category 0.150 0.124 0.106 1.211 0.228
Gender 0.143 0.096 0.080 1.487 0.139
Ethnicity 0.010 0.016 0.034 0.628 0.531
Educational level 0.081 0.060 0.076 1.361 0.175 Table 3.
Work experience 0.299 0.084 0.312 3.561 0.000 Hierarchical multiple
Functional area 0.233 0.116 0.115 2.006 0.047 regression model and
Authentic leadership 0.779 0.057 0.741 13.686 0.000 coefficients
IHR (β 5 0.312, t 5 3.561, p 5 0.000) and functional area (β 5 0.115, t 5 2.006, p 5 0.047). The
36,1 coefficient table shows authentic leadership as a significant predictor of organizational
justice in model 2 (β 5 0.741, t 5 13.686, p 5 0.000).
Thus, the coefficients of variables indicate that we would expect an increase of 0.78 in the
organizational justice perceptions for everyone unit increase in authentic leadership
perceptions, assuming that all other variables in the model are held constant. Similarly, one
standard deviation increase in authentic leadership would yield a 0.74 (β 5 0.741) standard
56 deviation increase in predicted organizational justice perception. As inferred from Table 3,
authentic leadership had significant positive progression weights, indicating that when hotel
employees perceive their leaders to be authentic, they are expected to have higher perceptions
of organizational justice.

Discussion
As shown by the results of this study, the relationship between the supervisor and employee
was a determining factor for employees in creating perceptions about fairness and justice in
their employing organization. Therefore, maintaining a supervisor – subordinate relationship
which is conducive of creating a productive work environment – is important for most
organizational outcomes. The challenge for many organizations is to ascertain which
leadership style is appropriate for their environment, and which leadership style and/ or
behavior will produce better outcomes including the perception of a just workplace. The
results illustrate that the relationship between authentic leadership and hotel employee’s
organizational justice perceptions in the study was significant and exhibited a strong degree
of positive correlation. That is, the more the employees perceive that their leaders to be
authentic, the more they are satisfied with the organizational procedures and outcomes such
as pay, performance and promotion. This is not surprising because employee’s relationship
with the leader is the most powerful connection that an employee can build in an organization
(Hui et al., 2004) and that relationship often determines the employee’s perceptions of
organizational justice (Colquitt et al., 2013).
The relationship between authentic leadership and employees’ perceptions of distributive
and procedural justice is significant and shows a moderate to strong degree of positive
correlation. Among the relationships between authentic leadership and dimensions of
organizational justice, the weakest correlation was between authentic leadership and
distributive justice followed by the relationship between authentic leadership and procedural
justice. Thus, the results support prior research that employees view the resource allocation
decisions and guidelines for procedures are established and controlled by the organization
rather than by their supervisors. However, the positive correlation and significance suggest
that hotel employees perceive their leaders to have some influence on organization-focused
justice (distributive and procedural). The results from this study reaffirmed the fact that
leaders are viewed as organization’s agents who maintain and promote fairness (Demirtas,
2015), and employees may expect that their behaviors have an important role to play in
affecting organizational procedures and outcomes. Similarly, authentic leadership
emphasizes on adherence to organizational policies and practices in a consistent manner,
which may influence employees’ perception to the organization’s fair procedures. Thus, this
study results allow an inference to be made that employees working under authentic
leadership perceive their organizational procedures and outcomes in a more favorable
manner.
The significant and strongest correlation from the study was between authentic
leadership and informational justice perception followed by the relationship between
authentic leadership and interactional justice. Extant literature (Byrne et al., 2012; Neubert
et al., 2009) has suggested that managers may have the greatest impact on overall fairness
perceptions by focusing on the fairness of their personal interactions with subordinates (i.e. Leadership and
interactional and informational justice). The correlation and regression analysis support the organizational
existing research by showing strong correlations between authentic leadership and
interactional forms of justice (informational and interactional). This may be due to the
justice in hotel
reason that supervisors are most likely to influence employees through their daily context
interactions and information sharing. Previous research also suggested that high levels of
interactional/ interpersonal and informational justice can compensate for low levels of
distributive and procedural justice (Cropanzano et al., 2007; Greenberg, 2006), further 57
bolstering the influence of direct supervisors on interactional and informational justice. The
results of the study support this notion by showing the relationship between organizational
justice to be stronger than distributive and procedural justice. Thus, this study results allow
an inference to be made that stronger relationship of authentic leadership with interpersonal
and informational justice compensated for moderate relationship at distributive and
procedural dimensions.
The results indicate that controlling for demographic variables, employees’ perception
about supervisor’s authentic leadership is a significant predictor of employees’
organizational justice perceptions. Prior research has suggested that a leader’s style
(Strom et al., 2014) may be responsible for directing employees’ attention either toward, or
away from, matters of organizational justice. The data and results of this study support the
above-mentioned and suggest that supervisors who are authentic, who give employees a
voice and who are interested in a transparent and just workplace promote the perceptions of
justice in workplace. The results support Greenberg’s (2011) suggestions for encouraging
organizational justice in the workplace, namely, providing workers adequate compensation,
allowing employees a voice to speak out and be heard and listened to, showing transparency
in implementing and carrying out fair procedures, telling decisions in a manner that shows
dignity and respect for the person and instilling in employees what it means to be fair through
training, case studies and exercises to increase their sensitivity to justice at work. The results
also support Kiersch and Byrne’s (2015) finding that being an authentic leader often means
being a fair leader, and that one way in which authentic leadership has a positive impact on
team members and team outcomes is via perceptions of fair treatment (organizational justice)
among the employees.

Theoretical implications
This study responds to the research direction provided by Karam et al. (2019) that future
researchers should examine whether moral/ ethical leader behaviors have significant
implications for justice perceptions and subsequently their joint effects in organizational
outcomes due to the connection between leader’s ethics-related judgments and organizational
justice perceptions. Further research is required to understand what aspects of authentic
leadership relate to the different dimensions of organizational justice and whether a
relationship exists between different aspects of authentic leadership and the dimensions of
organizational justice.
The differences in the strengths of relationship between authentic leadership and
structural forms of justice (distributive and procedural), and authentic leadership and
interactional forms of justice (informational and interpersonal), have implications for both
justice and leadership theories. The results suggest that authentic leader behaviors create a
fair climate – an interpersonally and informationally fair climate which promotes all forms of
justice perceptions in individual followers. However, it needs to be further researched
whether leaders with high interpersonal skills and information-sharing abilities showing
consideration and respect to employees may result in higher levels of organizational justice
perceptions. Thus, further research is needed to determine the relationship of authentic
IHR leadership and each of the organizational justice (distributive, procedural, informational and
36,1 interpersonal) dimensions, which may provide more insights as to whether leader behaviors
contain element of justice itself. Finally, it can be argued that even though leadership
literature highlights authentic leadership as a positive form of leadership focusing on certain
aspects of leadership (values, convictions, morality and ethics), it may simply be an internal
attribution based on the organizational environment which employees perceived to be fair. As
such, authentic leadership may be more of an impression related to the organizational
58 environment, and the consistency and predictability of a leader’s behavior rather than a
positive impression of the leader’s personal traits or values.

Practical implications
The conceptual argument that authentic leadership leads to increased levels of justice
perceptions was empirically supported by this study across all justice dimensions. The study
results also show that hotel employees perceive higher levels of informational and
interpersonal justice in comparison with distributive and procedural justice. That would
mean that employees who participated in this study perceived the distribution of outcomes and
the procedures followed to reach the outcomes in a less favorable manner. Hotel industry is
notorious for long working hours and low pay, and the study results may be another reflection
of the reality. When employees perceive distributive justice, they weigh their inputs against the
distribution of rewards and the rewards received by other employees. Therefore, leaders in the
hotel industry must endeavor to allocate rewards as fair as possible across individuals.
Similarly, hotel managers should make sure that the procedures used to make decisions are fair
and that employees are made aware of the procedures before allocation of rewards is done.
Given that this study has shown strong relationships between authentic leadership and
employees’ organizational justice perceptions, human resources development (HRD)
practitioners should review the results of this study relevant to practice. Research (Cottrill
et al., 2014) found that organizations can promote inclusive environments through authentic
leadership, and that inclusive environments promote employees’ work-related self-esteem
and their willingness to go above and beyond in their jobs. Thus, an authentic leadership
development program will benefit leaders to practice behaviors that would display high
levels of respect and mindfulness to followers and encourage them to follow practices that
will positively impact the bottom-line of the organization. Finally, the relationship between
authentic leadership and organizational justice as evidenced from this study calls for an
increased focus on ethics in organizations. Authentic leadership focuses on the ethical and
moral aspects of leadership than other leadership approaches, and therefore authentic
leadership can foster ethical decision-making. Therefore, HR practitioners should partner
with the organizational leaders in developing policies and procedures that actively support
and encourage ethical behavior and promote justice within their organizations. Similarly, HR
practitioners should implement programs creating a supportive work environment and
building positive relationships among employees and between employees and supervisors.
To summarize, the findings showcase the need for organizations in the hotel and
hospitality industry to establish programs that focus on leadership practices which improve
employees’ perceptions of organizational justice and, in turn, leads to positive organizational
outcomes including reducing the considerable costs of employee turnover. It is also important
that employees are aware of the policies and procedures and have a perception that they can
connect and communicate to their supervisors and managers.

Limitations
The study relied on self-reported data which are a reflective recollection of the individual’s
experience. This may result in response bias, a widely discussed phenomenon in behavioral
research where self-reported data are used. There are many reasons individuals might offer Leadership and
biased estimates of self-assessed behavior, ranging from a misunderstanding of what a organizational
proper measurement is, to social-desirability bias, where the respondent wants to “look good”
in the survey, even if the survey is anonymous. This is a cross-sectional study to be conducted
justice in hotel
in an uncontrolled field setting, thus precluding any inference of causal relationships among context
variables. The study is conducted over a certain interval of time and captures the responses
dependent on conditions occurring during that time; a longitudinal design (with adequate
time and resources) may better capture the change in perceptions over a period. 59
There was an underrepresentation of African American respondents, and thus the sample
in this study was not reflective of general population of hotel employees. A perceived reason
for such low response rate for African Americans may be a result of the method of survey
administration delivered electronically through email. This may point to the fact that African
Americans may be employed in positions which do not provide them with regular Internet
access / emails and brings into picture the bigger issues of digital divide and access to
technology. The constructs of organizational justice and authentic leadership are deeper than
it could be measured by a scale; thus, quantitative research is a tool with limited scope.
Finally, the surveys were not mobile-friendly which may have led to a decrease in the
completion rate of the surveys.

Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to determine whether a relationship existed between authentic
leadership and organizational justice perception among hotel employees. The results show
that a strong degree of correlation exists between authentic leadership and organizational
justice perceptions, and employee’s perception of authentic leadership is a predictor of
organizational justice. The hotel and hospitality industry are vital parts of the United States’
economy; however, hotel industry is notorious for a demanding work environment, long work
hours and low pay, which ultimately result in adverse behavioral and organizational
outcomes including high levels of employee turnover. Research also found that hotel
employees have most interactions (regarding pay, performance, procedures and others) with
their supervisors, and a great deal of their organizational justice perceptions are formed
through such interactions. Authentic leadership is a relative new leadership approach rooted
in positive psychology, emphasizing on the ethical and moral aspects of leadership; the
results of the study found that when employees perceive their leaders to be following the
authentic leadership paradigm, they also perceive high levels of organizational justice.
Authentic leadership has stronger relationships with informational and interpersonal
dimensions of justice which implies that authentic leaders are strategic in their interactions
with their employees. The results also imply that when employees studied in this research
perceived justice in terms of procedures and outcomes, they believed that organizations
determine those more than their supervisors. Finally, the results of this study may motivate
hospitality/ hotel leaders to include authentic leadership development as an actionable
strategy to bolster fairness and mitigate some of the negative features related to employment
relationships in the industry.

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Corresponding author
Deepu Kurian can be contacted at: dkurian3@uh.edu

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